“With a demon bomb, something not seen since the war,” I said.
“Is she dead?” EJ asked.
“Londyn?” Walter asked, crossing his feet at the ankle. “It grieves me to say, but your lady friend did not survive her encounter with her attackers. But the queen’s scions will read the vampire whose fingers you broke in the door. Good move, by the way. We will know a great deal tomorrow. Sooner, if the vampire is old enough to be awake in the day. However.” He tilted his head back and forth, considering. “We should have received more details fromOjosby now. Check your unicom and brief me on your lying client.”
EJ slapped open his unicom and the system began readingaloud. It was the newest security update of the information collected and collated on Chancy/Cennet. The trip into the hills lasted long enough to hear about schooling, marriage, children, divorce, and one new bit of information added two minutes ago by Alex Younger.
Chancy had an official political alliance with my ex-husband. Legal contract and all.
Walter touched his unicom system. Alex Younger answered. In a voice as frozen as the weather outside the vehicle, Walter said, “Explain the reason why I was not immediately informed of the client’s contract with Angelina’s ex-husband. I am the children’s bodyguard. I cannot protect them from unknowns.”
“Keep your pants on, dude,” Alex said. “You had the info, like, ten seconds after I found it. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. All-nighters are hard on a guy my age.”
“You are scarcely forty,” Walter spat, his voice far less liquid Jamaican and more precise British, “and you dined on vampire blood often enough as a teenager to remain young and spry. You could stay awake for days with few ill effects.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Flatter me. I like it. The information was buried. The contract wasn’t signed in Chattanooga, but in New York, and the paperwork was filed there, under the auspices of the MOC of New York, Julietta Ravensport, a vampire who’s been problematic, politically speaking, and who also happens to be part of the contract. I’m digging into why the contract was signed there and who all the signees are, and what tangled relationships they have with Karson Marrazzo.”
I was buzzing all over, as my gift was trying to activate but couldn’t because of the headache. Which chose this moment to thud like a drum.
“I’m pulling dossiers,” Alex said, “but if New York is involved with this, you need to be careful.”
“Always,” EJ said, “but in this specific situation, why?”
Outside, sleet slashed across the car and faded just as fast.
“In the last year of the war, Julietta Ravensport challenged Jane Yellowrock, as head of Clan Yellowrock, to Sangre Duello,” Alex said.
“Yeah?” EJ said. “So?”
I drew the political and familial conclusions, but EJ wouldn’t. He’d been a teenager when he volunteered for Section Seven service. I explained, “If she had challenged the queen, Ravensport would have had to battle through the chain of command and defeat all the people in line before her. Instead she challenged the head of Clan Yellowrock.”
Alex said, “Challenging Jane as clan head, instead of as queen, was brilliant. It created a dynamic and dangerous layer of machinations set in place over twenty years ago, before Jane became queen and before Edmund became emperor. Those relationships were never dismantled and they should have been.”
EJ still looked lost so I said, “Only three swordsmen, Jane’s tertio, secondo, and primo, stood between her and the leader of Clan Yellowrock, and through her to multiple kingdoms.”
My brother squinted as if he was finally putting it together.
While he thought, I wallowed in a pool of guilt. I had walked away from coven, clan, and royalty. I had effectively been out of the loop of vampire politics except those brought to me by my husband. No one had seen a reason to share the information until now. It was possible—likely—that I had been the central pivot point for all this.
On top of the guilt, I was…I waspissed. At myself.
Walter sniffed the air and his entire body tightened at the rage-stink he could smell, leaking out of my pores.
“I already knew Asshat courted and married me because of my relationship with Aunt Jane.” I managed a breath thatburned my lungs. “And now I see it was also because of my relationship with the emperor.”
EJ said, “Explain? Please, somebody, explain.”
I said, “Because Ravensport challenged Aunt Jane instead of thequeen, she had to go through only those three people to get to fight her. Originally, in Clan Yellowrock, before he was emperor, Aunt Jane’s primo was Edmund. No one changed the paperwork when she became queen. It was a loophole.”
In vamp hierarchy, if you challenged the top vamp, you had to fight through every single one of that vamp’s top fighters and win, before you could actually get to fight the top dog. In Clan Yellowrock, Edmund was one step down from Aunt Jane.One step. If our enemy had won, she would have been Empress of Europe before she fought Aunt Jane.
EJ said, “So, by challenging her as leader of Clan Yellowrock instead of as queen, she cut through all the red tape and only had to outfight and kill two people before she faced Edmund. Who, even then, ruled over all of Europe.”
Alex said, “Julietta Ravensport is calculating and conniving, with a heart as black as tar. She holds a very long and very violent grudge. And she can fight like a fallen angel.”
He added, “I’ve sent a compilation vid of all of her most prominent duels to your office, and a snippet of those top three to your unicoms andOjos.
“Ravensport’s contract involves The Firm’s client, Chancy/Cennet and your girlfriend, Little Evan,” Alex said, using EJ’s childhood nickname, perhaps as a way to soften the blows he was delivering. “And your ex, Angie Baby.
